Breakthroughs coming in with the tide?

These are the Best of Time and Worst of Times for EcoGeeks. We know that Global Warming is already wreaking havoc, that snipping our hair is likely to show mercury, that plastics just don’t go away. But, boy, it is truly the best of times. One can’t pause for a moment without seeming to miss yet another breakthrough, yet another exciting development. And always, more of these are moving from the lab to deployment.While still advancing, wind power is almost becoming blase. Exciting that it’s displacing coal, but once you’ve seen a 1000 windmills, after all, how exciting is 1001? Until we start producing gigawatts of power, how else will they get exciting?

Well, they could go underwater.

One way to look at tidal, wave, and river water power generation is to look at it about a decade behind wind power. Just now moving from the lab into power generation with breakout potential just over the horizon. This month should see installation of one of those exciting tidal power generation systems, a 1.2 mw system to be be installed in Strangford Lough by SeaGen. After years of testing smaller turbines, this is a production level system that is going in the water. This is the last phase of testing and development before large scale installations can occur.

There is a huge potential for inexpensive and predictable power by capturing tidal energy. Get ready for some massive growth in the industry.